Page 546 - moby-dick

a deadly drain is at once begun upon his whole arterial
system; and when this is heightened by the extraordinary
pressure of water at a great distance below the surface, his
life may be said to pour from him in incessant streams.
Yet so vast is the quantity of blood in him, and so distant
and numerous its interior fountains, that he will keep thus
bleeding and bleeding for a considerable period; even as in a
drought a river will flow, whose source is in the well-springs
of far-off and undiscernible hills. Even now, when the boats
pulled upon this whale, and perilously drew over his sway-
ing flukes, and the lances were darted into him, they were
followed by steady jets from the new made wound, which
kept continually playing, while the natural spout-hole in his
head was only at intervals, however rapid, sending its af-
frighted moisture into the air. From this last vent no blood
yet came, because no vital part of him had thus far been
struck. His life, as they significantly call it, was untouched.
As the boats now more closely surrounded him, the
whole upper part of his form, with much of it that is ordi-
narily submerged, was plainly revealed. His eyes, or rather
the places where his eyes had been, were beheld. As strange
misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of the noblest
oaks when prostrate, so from the points which the whale’s
eyes had once occupied, now protruded blind bulbs, hor-
ribly pitiable to see. But pity there was none. For all his old
age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the
death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and
other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the sol-
emn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by